Today shoppers have a number of choices to shop for and to buy merchandise.
The usual way is for a consumer to go to a store, with or without a shopping list, locate the required items on the store's shelves, purchase them and then take the items home, or to work.
The first major evolution of shopping was the mail order catalog, which was first established in Chicago by Aaron Montgomery Ward and his brother-in-law George R. Thorne. By 1904, three million catalogs weighing 4 pounds each were being mailed to consumers. The next step in the shopping experience evolution was the advent of telephone catalog ordering.
Today these two shopping methods have been combined into a method called MOTO, i.e. Mail Order/Telephone Order. The MOTO purchasing model has a consumer browse a catalog that was mailed to the consumer; the consumer calls the mail order house's phone number and purchases the selected item, usually with a credit card. The merchandise is shipped to the consumer.
A recent historical evolution for shoppers occurred when the Internet exploded on the marketplace around about 1996. The current terminology for this method of consumer shopping is called e-commerce and B2C (i.e. Business To Consumer). According to the October 2000 report by NetValue (www.netvalue.com), 74.2 percent of the 52 million Internet connected US households visited an e-commerce web site. 40.6 percent of these households connected using a secure connection. This usually implies that a purchase was made or was considered over the Internet. The e-commerce shopping model is similar to the MOTO model, i.e. a consumer browses an online catalog, purchases the selected item with a credit card and the merchandise is shipped to the consumer. Various retailers have adopted this business model, e.g. groceries can be ordered online and delivered to a consumer. Examples of these grocery businesses include WebVan and Peapod. Other consumer e-commerce sites include Amazon.com and StoreRunner.
According to an Aug. 11, 2000 US Census Bureau news release, in 1997 sales of all kinds of merchandise from electronic shopping (e.g. via the Internet) and mail-order houses sold $79 billion of goods. Computer hardware, software and supplies accounted for 29 percent; clothing and footwear, 15 percent; and drugs, health aids and beauty aids, 13 percent. Details of this 1997 US Census Bureau report can be found on the Internet at www.census.gov/epcd/www/econ97.html.
Another interesting consumer shopping business model is the one from Qode Inc. (www.qode.com) This model has consumers scanning in Uniform Product Code (UPC) bar codes with a portable device called a Qoder. The bar codes are then transferred via a Qoder “base-station” device attached to the keyboard port on a PC. The bar codes are then uploaded to the Qode web site on the Internet and into a consumer's personal directory. Qode then searches for online deals and special promotions, or provides the nearest stores to the consumer that sells the scanned products. Qode is working on extending the means by which the consumer accesses their pricing web site, e.g. by manually entering the bar code via a cell phone or regular phone. A similar methodology is claimed by BarPoint.com (www.barpoint.com), which claims to have a patent pending on “search engine technology to allow businesses and consumers to use the UPC barcode number that appears on more than 100 million retail items to instantly obtain detailed product and price information from the Internet . . . . This information includes detailed product descriptions, comparative prices, links to order the product from vendor partners, product reviews, manufacturer contact information and much more.” Problems with this system include forcing the consumer to connect to a central site to obtain a list of the scanned in bar codes and their description. Furthermore the keyboard interface requires specialized device drivers to be written for each personal computer (PC) operating system, e.g. MS Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME/CE, Apple, Linux, Palm OS, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,129,276 from Jelen, et al. teaches a similar model to the Qode shopping model. The '276 patent teaches the use of a user terminal that has a UPC bar code scanner through which the user compiles a shopping list database. At this stage the user can selectively transmit the acquired shopping list database to a base unit located at a retailer via a network, such as the Internet. The central database can then shop for competitive products on the users shopping list, provide information on any coupons related to items on the shopping list and provide information on various options for specific products, e.g. various packaging sizes, etc. Similar problems with the Qoder apply to this patent as well, i.e. every time the consumer must connect to a central site to obtain a list of the scanned in bar codes and their description.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,884,281 from Smith, et al. teaches an electronic grocery list device which provides the consumer with a predetermined list of various common groceries from which the consumer assembles his own grocery list. The consumer's grocery list can be transmitted to a grocer via either a fax or data modem. Furthermore the consumer can print her grocery list via a printer attached to the '281. The '281 does not use a bar code scanner for input, not does it provide comparison-shopping like the '276 and Qode system do.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,483,472 from Overman teaches a portable electronic food shopper similar to a pocket calculator. The '472 does not interface with bar code scanners, or a central database, which provides other services including comparative online shopping.
An application on the Cybiko wireless appliance (www.cybiko.com) called the Grocery List provides consumers with a portable device in which to enter and carry a shopping list within. This is similar in principal to using various Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) such as from Palm, Handspring and Psion in which a consumer can use the To Do List function to maintain a shopping list.
Consumers use newspaper advertisements to help them shop. The Sunday newspapers are usually full of ad's that help guide a consumer. Another tried and tested method to shop is by word of mouth. Consumers share information about where they have purchased items, etc.